Employers Are Required to Provide Pay EEO Data for 2017 and 2018

May 7, 2019

On Friday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) announced that it will collect workforce pay data for the years 2017 and 2018, after a federal judge’s ruling in late April that pay data must be collected by the agency despite an administration attempt to block the requirement.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in April affirmed the additional reporting requirements for the EEOC’s EEO-1 form, requiring employers now to report detailed information on the compensation paid to its workforce sorted by job category, pay band, race, ethnicity, and gender for the year 2018. The EEOC originally announced its intention to collect pay data in 2016, but the Trump administration rolled back the original EEOC plan, citing the paperwork burden. The administration’s approach was challenged in court by the National Women’s Law Center and Labor Council for Latin American Advancement. In finding for the plaintiffs, the federal judge ruled that the pay information for 2018 must be submitted by employers by September 30, 2019. The district judge deferred to the EEOC to determine for which other years it wished to collect data, and on Friday, the EEOC announced it would collect the pay-related data for 2017 as well. Data for both years therefore must be submitted by September 30, 2019.

Employers with more than 100 employees, and federal contractors with 50 or more employees, are already required to inform the EEOC regarding workforce demographics by job category, race, ethnicity, and gender by means of the EEO-1 form. That data comprises the so-called Component 1 data. The new pay data is known as the Component 2 data. On May 3, 2019, the Department of Justice filed an appeal of the district court’s ruling. But until there is a determination of that appeal, employers should plan to provide the required information by the September 30, 2019 deadline.

In its Friday announcement, the EEOC indicated it will begin collecting the pay data in mid-July 2019, and stated that it will notify employer of the precise date the survey will open as soon as that information is available.

For questions on the new requirement, please contact a member of O’Hagan Meyer’s Labor & Employment Practice Group.